Funny Faces
by SweetDeamon
Summary: Teddy learns that some faces are not as funny as others...


_Note: Another canon compliant one shot. I hope you enjoy reading it! I'm not sure it turned out as it was meant to...but I hope somebody likes it anyway! Thank you in advance to anybody who is kind enough to leave a review._

_Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor am I making any profit from this piece of writing. _

**Funny Faces**

A fresh burst of laughter filled the crowded sitting room of the Potter household, in which the adults of the Potter-Weasley clan had gathered after dinner, having tucked their various offspring up in beds upstairs.

Yes, the sitting room was a child-free zone.

Almost.

There were three primary reasons why Harry Potter had chosen to let his godson Teddy Lupin stay up late, rather than dragging him kicking and screaming upstairs like the others. For one thing Teddy was just a little older than the others, then there was the fact that his grandmother would be arriving soon to take him home to his own bed anyway.

And besides, Teddy was funny!

The little boy was sat upon the carpet, engrossed in an activity that the adults found amusing to say the least. He appeared to have gotten hold of the hand held mirror that baby James had been using as a club to bash unsuspecting building bricks with some hour beforehand, and beside him he had a box full of old photographs. For some half an hour he had been carefully selecting each picture in turn, studying it for a long moment, before turning his attention to his reflection in the mirror. Then, having screwed up his face and gritted his teeth (which was, to be honest, amusing in itself), he would attempt to morph his features to match the people in the photographs.

"He's getting very good at it!" Ron Weasley admitted with a chuckle as he found himself looking down at a replica of his own face, his wife and relatives breaking out into laughter yet again. "Merlin...is my nose really that big?"

"He does seem to be able to control it remarkably well for somebody so young. Then again he can only hold the morph for a moment...oh Harry! Look how messy your hair looks!"

The spectacle continued for several more minutes as Ron's face made another appearance, followed by Arthur Weasley, whose ears seemed to have doubled in size. Having had a good laugh at a rather wide eyed looking Bill, the adults watched the child pick up the next photograph, staring down at it intently.

"You're laughing now," Bill announced from his seat in the far corner, "but just you wait, George, he'll get to you in a minute!"

The laughter swelled yet again as they watched Teddy screw his face up...

Only to stop dead at the sight of the face that turned to smile up at them.

Harry's grip upon his tea cup slackened in shock, but he barely noticed the hot liquid splashing down his front, seeping down onto his lap.

Remus Lupin's face positively beamed.

As the adults began to mumble uncomfortably to one another, Hermione reaching to put a hand to her mouth and Ginny's eyes drifting firmly closed, Teddy's godfather got hurriedly to his feet, thrusting the damp china into his wife's lap. As he hurried over to crouch beside the boy, Teddy looked around at the assortment of pained expressions with no small amount of confusion.

"It's Daddy!" he explained loudly, just in case they couldn't quite tell.

"That's very clever, Teddy," Harry mumbled hurriedly, "but...but I think you've done enough morphing for one day..." As the child's hair began to turn a painfully familiar shade of pink, his godfather failed to resist the urge to reach and snatch the photograph from his hand. As Remus' eyes fixed him with a questioning look, Harry silently cursed the fact that now had to be the time when Teddy managed to maintain a morph for more than five seconds.

When Harry merely continued to stare down at him, Teddy glanced around the wizard at the people sat upon the sofa.

"What's wrong with Grandma Molly?" he asked, and Harry glanced over his shoulder to see Molly reaching to dab at her eyes with a handkerchief.

"Nothing, Ted." the dark haired Auror mumbled awkwardly, shoving the photograph into his pocket and reached to scoop the boy up into his arms. "It's just...well...some faces aren't as funny as others..." he got carefully to his feet, eyes purposefully averted from the boy's face, which by now resembled a bizarre mix of both his parents. It ought look humorous, Harry supposed, but the sight of the two dead Order members did something uncomfortable to his insides, whether they were oddly mixed together or not. "Come on, let's go and find your shoes, your gran's going to be here in a minute."

He took Teddy out into the hallway, sat him down at the bottom of the stairs and went in search of his elusive shoes, which had become buried somewhere in the cupboard by the door. When he turned back some minutes later, holding up the trainers in silent triumph, he discovered that Remus' hair had returned to its original pale brown. Harry supposed he ought attempt to explain to Teddy just how difficult it was for him to watch his dead friend smiling lopsidedly up at him, how it had made he and everybody else sad, but with such familiar, warm brown eyes watching him intently, calm reason was momentarily beyond him.

Harry couldn't help it, he snapped.

"Stop morphing!" he demanded, grip upon the shoes tightening in frustration. "I mean it, Teddy, stop morphing right now! If your gran sees this she'll...she'll...oh no, Ted, don't...don't cry..."

_Idiot_, the Auror silently scolded himself as the little boy's face contorted miserably. _At least he's lost the morph..._

Abandoning the shoes, he hurried over to crouch down in front of the boy, relieved at the sight of tufts of turquoise hair and a round, child-like face.

"Listen, Teddy," he said hurriedly, reaching to take hold of the boy by the hands. "You can't just...just morph Mummy and Daddy's faces like that..."

"Why not?" Teddy asked, voice an octave higher from his sudden tears.

"Because it's not funny, Ted. It's not at all funny, it makes people sad..."

"Mummy and Daddy make people sad?"

"No...of course not! No, they helped make us all very happy, it's just...well we miss them very much and...seeing them makes us feel very sad. Do you understand?"

Teddy gave a slow nod, expression deadly solemn, and Harry hurriedly reached to busy himself with the shoes, because looking like that the child's face was equally as painful a sight as his father's.

The following evening the Potters dropped in for a cup of tea with Teddy's grandmother, and within minutes it had occurred to Harry that something was different. Something had changed.

"Where are all the photographs?" he asked Andromeda as he looked around the little sitting room, counting off the empty spaces in his head. There had been a picture of Tonks on that sideboard, dressed up in pristine school robes, about to leave for Hogwarts, Harry could remember it as clear as day, and beside it another photo in a golden frame, Tonks with her father Ted, both grinning proudly at her graduation from Auror training. And over there, on the coffee table beside Andromeda's chair, there had been Tonks and Remus sat in this very room, accompanied by a large bump peeping out from beneath her t-shirt, snapped mere days before Teddy had been born. It had been the photograph that always made Harry smile, seeing Tonks' legs sprawled out across the sofa as she leaned up against Remus' side, his arm around her middle, hands resting upon the swell of her stomach. Harry would look at their smiling faces and feel glad that Remus had made the right decision before it had been too late. Then there was the missing wedding picture that had disappeared from the table out in the hallway, he'd noticed as he'd walked in...

Where on earth had they all gone?

"They've been disappearing ever since I got up this morning." Andromeda explained with a frown as she passed Ginny the biscuit barrel. "I'm sure Teddy has something to do with it, he's been sneaking around a lot today, but I can't seem to find them anywhere. Merlin knows what he's doing with them."

And then something inside Harry's head clicked. He immediately got to his feet.

"Where is he?" he asked, ignoring Ginny as she held out the biscuits for him to take.

"He's in his bedroom." Andromeda said with a little smile. "Probably finding somewhere to hide his loot."

It seemed that Andromeda's guess was spot on, for when Harry opened the door to his godson's bedroom some minute later he discovered the boy busy sat upon his bed, stuffing a mound of papers into a pillowcase.

"Hey Ted," the Auror greeted, stepping inside and pushing the door shut behind him. "What're you up to?"

The child paused in his activity and looked over at his godfather, his expression so deadly serious that he seemed to age a decade or two on the spot.

"I'm making everybody happy."

"Right..." Harry took a few steps forward, reaching to scratch his head as Teddy returned his attention to the pillowcase. "Are those your gran's photographs? Do you think she wants you to stuff them in there like that?"

"Yes." came the determined reply.

Pursing his lips together, Harry went to perch upon the edge of the bed, wincing as a handful of photographs were shoved unceremoniously into the pillowcase.

"I'm not sure about that, they might get bent and ruined."

Apparently Teddy was unconcerned by this, as he explained:

"But these are pictures of Mummy and Daddy, and you said that seeing them makes people sad."

Harry reached to put a firm hand upon the boy's arm, halting his progress.

"I didn't mean it like that, Ted. Pictures of your Mummy and Daddy don't make people sad...sometimes they do but most of the time they make us feel happy." When Teddy stared up at him, confused at this contradiction, he tried to explain. "You morphing your Daddy's face, Ted, makes us sad because we miss him and it shocks people to see him like that. But these pictures...they aren't just a collection of faces, they're memories. Good memories. We don't take pictures of bad ones. See this one..." he reached forward and pulled out a photograph at random, finding himself looking down at a teenaged Tonks sat at the dining room table with an enormous birthday cake and candles in front of her. "Mummy's birthday...I bet your gran looks at this and thinks...gosh doesn't she look pretty and um...and didn't we have fun watching her try to blow out all the candles, or something like that. And this one..." he chose another picture, a cluster of Order members around the table at Grimmauld Place. "Look at them, Ted. Standing there with all their friends, I wonder what they'd been doing at Headquarters that day, probably planning something dead clever and brave. Makes me think of all the great things they did, how they made the world a better place. That makes me happy. Very happy. Do you understand?"

In response Teddy gave a silent nod, then plunged his hand into the assortment of photographs and drew one out too. He watched as Remus set a squirming bundle of blankets down upon his lap. As a pair of tiny hands reached up at him, he offered baby Teddy a finger to grasp before leaning forwards a little and sticking out his tongue, blowing a silent raspberry at the infant. The baby waved it's hands about excitedly, and as he looked down at the scene, older Teddy giggled, causing his godfather to smile.

"Now _that_," Harry said as they both shared a grin. "That, Teddy, is a _proper_ funny face."


End file.
